Hellboy: The Wild Hunt
Encyclopedia
Hellboy: The Wild Hunt is the ninth collected edition in Mike Mignola
's Hellboy
comic book
series, the second of three connected story arcs written by Mignola and illustrated by Duncan Fegredo
. Its eight chapters, collected in March 2010, were originally released from December 2008 through November 2009 as issues 1-8 of the "Hellboy: The Wild Hunt" limited series
, also numbered (on the inside front cover) as issues 37 through 44 of the continuing Hellboy series. The storyline delves into Irish and Arthurian legend, reprising several characters first introduced in Hellboy short story "The Corpse."
As with Hellboy stories generally, it was published by Dark Horse Comics
.
, king of the Irish fairies, attended by several Tuatha de Danaan and also Alice Monaghan, the baby he saved from fairy changeling The Gruagach
in Hellboy short story "The Corpse;" he recognizes her although she is now fully grown. A small talking bird tells him that the Dagda has been murdered and war is brewing. Hellboy wakes and his hosts hand him a letter which summons him to the site of a ruined English church which quarters not only The Osiris Club, last seen in "The Nature of the Beast", but also a secret society of British noblemen gathered to hunt giants, and naming itself "The Wild Hunt" after the legend of Herne the Hunter
. Meanwhile, at the site of the Dagda's murder, a restless fairy army awaits the resurrection of the "Queen of Blood" who, the vengeful Gruagach argues, will soon arise to lead them in a war against Hellboy and humankind. Having joined the Wild hunt, Hellboy and companions ride to a bridge where they will ambush a party of giants, but his fellow huntsmen betray and attack him declaring "the devil shall never sit on the throne of England."
Unconscious, Hellboy finds himself in the tomb of King Arthur
before awaking to find the hunting party slaughtered by the giants they had been hoping to ambush. The little bird from Hellboy's dream has been ordered to make Hellboy safely invisible but Hellboy seeks out the giants, and shedding his invisibility, attacks them. Meanwhile, the arch-devil Astaroth
(last seen in Box Full of Evil) appears to the Gruagach, hears his story, and gives him a small chalice filled with the blood of an entire English village Astaroth has just killed. The Gruagach pours it into the crate containing the remains of the "Queen of Blood", and she arises from it.
Having concluded his fight with the giants, which he remembers ruefully, Hellboy visits Alice's cottage in Ireland. A lifelong friend of the fairies, she has been expecting him since the Dagda's funeral and takes him to a hillside to meet fairy Queen Mab
. Meanwhile the "Queen of Blood" accepts a delegation from the witches, punishing several who were responsible for betraying and killing her centuries previously out of fear. Then she begins to assemble her full army. Back in Ireland Alice and Hellboy wait for Queen Mab, discussing their responsibility for the brewing war, and Mab, arriving, not only agrees, predicting that Hellboy's good works are doomed to end the world, but noting that demonic savagery has begun to consume Hellboy, as evidenced by his ruthlessness in fighting the giants. Before vanishing, she tells him his one hope is to inherit a crown from his mother rather than from his father, and lead an army against the army of the Queen of Blood. Once she is gone they find an odd little fairy waiting to guide them.
Hellboy flashes back to his brutal combat with the giants and then confronts his new guide, who he assumes is working for Queen Mab, and who repeatedly insists Hellboy is an Englishman despite Hellboy's protests to the contrary, as Hellboy and Alice follow him through a suddenly-appearing, unearthly landscape. The two discuss Hellboy's recent death and resurrection (in short story "The Island") until their guide announces that, in revenge for all the faerie creatures Hellboy has killed in his career, he has led them into an ambush. Hellboy and Alice are besieged by a horde of pygmy fairy savages wielding poison-tipped weapons. Alice is struck and fatally poisoned, when three bird-women arrive, killing or scaring off Hellboy's attackers. They tell Hellboy that "their mistress" has medicine for Alice's poisoning and then transport him to a hill overlooking their castle, which is wreathed in flame.
Awaiting her own army, the "Queen of Blood" comforts Gruagach and promises to grant his prayers to be restored to the strength of his youth and to revenged on Hellboy. Meanwhile Hellboy, outside the flame-ringed castle, is told that he's been brought to it in order to defeat Eligos
, a duke of Hell commanding a troop of demons who besiege it. The demon batters Hellboy unstoppably until, in return for a promise of favor should he claim his throne, Hellboy learns from a nearby imp the secret of Eligos' one weakness, an insignia worn as a ring. Hellboy destroys the ring and kills the weakened demon, ignoring his pleas for mercy, before racing Alice into the castle to be immediately and successfully cured with the antidote. The mistress of the castle appears and is revealed to be Morgan le Fay
. Meanwhile the Queen of Blood receives a deputation from the dwarf-like "King of Jutland" and orders the king's tearful craftsman-ambassador to return home and murder the king, feeding his heart to the fire and forging her a helmet reflecting her new incarnation as Badbh
, Macha
, and Mor-rioghain
, the triple goddess of war.
As Alice recovers from her poisoning, Morgan le Fay tells Hellboy that his witch mother (whose name she reveals to have been Sarah Hughes, his demon father's having been Azzael), was the last in a line of female descendants, all witches, of Mordred
, her son by King Arthur. This means that Hellboy is Mordred's first male descendant, and "rightful king of Britain". While conveying Alice to a sickbed, she identifies Hellboy with the Red Dragon
of Britain that Merlin
identified under Vortigern
's Tower
. She then takes Hellboy to a garden pool where the sword Excalibur
floats embedded in a stone. She reveals that the Queen of Blood is the witch Nimue, who, following her seduction and defeat of Merlin, has used Merlin's stolen powers to commune with (and be driven mad by) Hellboy's arch-nemesis, the Ogdru Jahad
, before being killed by her fearful fellow-witches. Morgan le Fay insists that to defeat Nimue, Hellboy must draw Excalibur and thereby summon an undead army of British noblemen (many of whom seemingly hang in full armor from the branches of a great tree growing through her castle). As Morgan le Fay describes Nimue's bloodlust, Hellboy relives the conclusion of his fight with the giants, in which his own bloodlust (using a makeshift sword), had apparently caused him, in panels accompanied by quotes from the Book of Revelations, to briefly settle into his destined role as Beast of the Apocalypse. He awakens from his memories and Morgan leaves him, dejected and shaken, alone with the sword.
Walking through the castle Hellboy broods on the situation. In Alice's room he briefly sees a ghostly Vasilisa (last seen in "Darkness Calls"
) who warns caution before disappearing. Alice awakens and urges him to take the sword, telling him of a dream she has just had in which King Arthur in his tomb tells her her life is bound to the sword and that she will be "first to see the new king with his crown." Later, Hellboy hears a howling and leaves the now-sleeping Alice to investigate. Astaroth appears to him and tells him he hears the dogs of the mythical Wild Hunt who smell the war that's coming. Astaroth will not say who leads the Hunt but tells Hellboy that Satan has been asleep under his city of Pandemonium for "almost two thousand years now," fated to be killed in his sleep by Hellboy himself when Hellboy goes down to Pandemonium throwing down Satan's princes and generals, and claiming his waiting crown and his father's sword. Astaroth insists that Hellboy will then use his stone right hand to enliven a waiting inanimate army which alone can break the bonds of Hell freeing its denizens to overrrun and annihilate the world. As Hellboy battles a reflection of himself, bearing sword and crown, which attacks him from a nearby mirror, Astaroth tells him that if he takes Excalibur (as he must to save the world from Nimue) the act will inevitably lead to him claiming his demon father's sword, and himself destroying the world. His battle with his mirror image concludes with the castle being briefly engulfed in flame, leaving him alone and worrying aloud what has happened to Alice.
Hellboy finds Alice's charred remains in her sickroom, where Vasilisa appears to Hellboy to ask him why he didn't take Excalibur. Hellboy explains that he does not trust Morgan le Fay and that, in light of the bloodlust he showed wielding a sword against the giants, he fears what he would do if he took Excalibur. She argues that rather than trusting what he's been told of his world-destroying destiny, he should trust Alice's faith in him and her desire for him to take the sword. He goes back to the sword, and - watched by Vasilisa and Astaroth, and from afar also by Queen Mab and Dagda's old servant, Sir Edward Grey and the witch doctor Mohlomi, the Baba Yaga and her servant Koku, and three witches watching scrying in their cauldron - he pulls the sword easily from the stone, saying "Son of a ..." and suddenly finds himself beside a still-living Alice out on the hillside where they had met Mab, dressed as if nothing had transpired since, save that Hellboy is holding the sword. They embrace, and in her castle Morgan le Fay notes the event while reviewing a chessboard populated by white and black skeletons and one red king. The Gruagach begs Nimue to empower him as promised, but when he realizes she lacks the power to do so she becomes enraged at his lack of faith and banishes him from her service to wander off in tears. Hellboy and Alice wander down the hill musing over Hellboy's newfound kingship, as Lady Hatton of the Osiris club observes them in her scrying glass. When the club's newer members begin to panic over Hellboy's accession to kingship, they are killed by the club's original seven members who explain that they have been waiting for Hellboy's kingship since 1866 when the spirit Larzod, also inspiration of long-time Hellboy adversaries the Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra, had appeared to them and granted them immortality with which to await Hellboy's death in final battle, cutting off and seizing his world-controlling stone right hand. Finally, the craftsman-ambassador from Jutland, having murdered his king for the heart he has extracted to burn as fuel, tearfully holds up the helmet he has forged for Nimue, in the form of a trio of ravens.
Mike Mignola
Michael Joseph "Mike" Mignola is an American comic book artist and writer who created the comic book series Hellboy for Dark Horse Comics. He has worked for animation projects such as Atlantis: The Lost Empire and the adaptation of his one shot comic book, The Amazing Screw-On Head.-Career:Mignola...
's Hellboy
Hellboy
Hellboy is a comic book superhero created by writer-artist Mike Mignola. The character first appeared in San Diego Comic-Con Comics #2 , and has since appeared in various eponymous miniseries, one-shots and intercompany crossovers...
comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
series, the second of three connected story arcs written by Mignola and illustrated by Duncan Fegredo
Duncan Fegredo
Duncan Fegredo is a British comic book artist born in Leicester in 1964.-Career:Fegredo first managed to get into comics after showing his portfolio around UKCAC in 1987 and meeting Dave Thorpe. Together they worked on a strip for a short lived British magazine called Heartbreak Hotel...
. Its eight chapters, collected in March 2010, were originally released from December 2008 through November 2009 as issues 1-8 of the "Hellboy: The Wild Hunt" limited series
Limited series
A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....
, also numbered (on the inside front cover) as issues 37 through 44 of the continuing Hellboy series. The storyline delves into Irish and Arthurian legend, reprising several characters first introduced in Hellboy short story "The Corpse."
Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others
Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others is the third trade paperback collection in the Hellboy series created by Mike Mignola published by Dark Horse Comics on August 5, 1998 which collects various mini-series, one-shots and back-up features featuring fictional paranormal detective Hellboy.-The...
As with Hellboy stories generally, it was published by Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics is the largest independent American comic book and manga publisher.Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon, with the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals. Richardson started out by opening his first comic book...
.
Summary
Asleep in the home of deceased friends in Italy, a dreaming Hellboy visits the funeral of the DagdaDagda
The Dagda is an important god of Irish mythology.Dagda can also refer to:*Dagda, Latvia, a city in eastern Latvia*Dagda , an Irish New Age band...
, king of the Irish fairies, attended by several Tuatha de Danaan and also Alice Monaghan, the baby he saved from fairy changeling The Gruagach
Gruagach (Hellboy)
Gruagach is a fictional character, created by writer-artist Mike Mignola. He first appeared as the main antagonist in the short story Hellboy: The Corpse, and then reappeared in Hellboy: Strange Places, developing into a major antagonist similar to Prince Nuada, the antagonist of the film Hellboy...
in Hellboy short story "The Corpse;" he recognizes her although she is now fully grown. A small talking bird tells him that the Dagda has been murdered and war is brewing. Hellboy wakes and his hosts hand him a letter which summons him to the site of a ruined English church which quarters not only The Osiris Club, last seen in "The Nature of the Beast", but also a secret society of British noblemen gathered to hunt giants, and naming itself "The Wild Hunt" after the legend of Herne the Hunter
Herne the Hunter
In English folklore, Herne the Hunter is a ghost associated with Windsor Forest and Great Park in the English county of Berkshire. His appearance is notable in the fact that he has antlers upon his head....
. Meanwhile, at the site of the Dagda's murder, a restless fairy army awaits the resurrection of the "Queen of Blood" who, the vengeful Gruagach argues, will soon arise to lead them in a war against Hellboy and humankind. Having joined the Wild hunt, Hellboy and companions ride to a bridge where they will ambush a party of giants, but his fellow huntsmen betray and attack him declaring "the devil shall never sit on the throne of England."
Unconscious, Hellboy finds himself in the tomb of King Arthur
King Arthur
King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...
before awaking to find the hunting party slaughtered by the giants they had been hoping to ambush. The little bird from Hellboy's dream has been ordered to make Hellboy safely invisible but Hellboy seeks out the giants, and shedding his invisibility, attacks them. Meanwhile, the arch-devil Astaroth
Astaroth
Astaroth , in demonology, is a Crowned Prince of Hell. He is a male figure named after the Canaanite goddess Ashtoreth.-Background:...
(last seen in Box Full of Evil) appears to the Gruagach, hears his story, and gives him a small chalice filled with the blood of an entire English village Astaroth has just killed. The Gruagach pours it into the crate containing the remains of the "Queen of Blood", and she arises from it.
Having concluded his fight with the giants, which he remembers ruefully, Hellboy visits Alice's cottage in Ireland. A lifelong friend of the fairies, she has been expecting him since the Dagda's funeral and takes him to a hillside to meet fairy Queen Mab
Queen Mab
Queen Mab is a fairy referred to in Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. She also appears in other 17th century literature, and in various guises in later poetry, drama and cinema...
. Meanwhile the "Queen of Blood" accepts a delegation from the witches, punishing several who were responsible for betraying and killing her centuries previously out of fear. Then she begins to assemble her full army. Back in Ireland Alice and Hellboy wait for Queen Mab, discussing their responsibility for the brewing war, and Mab, arriving, not only agrees, predicting that Hellboy's good works are doomed to end the world, but noting that demonic savagery has begun to consume Hellboy, as evidenced by his ruthlessness in fighting the giants. Before vanishing, she tells him his one hope is to inherit a crown from his mother rather than from his father, and lead an army against the army of the Queen of Blood. Once she is gone they find an odd little fairy waiting to guide them.
Hellboy flashes back to his brutal combat with the giants and then confronts his new guide, who he assumes is working for Queen Mab, and who repeatedly insists Hellboy is an Englishman despite Hellboy's protests to the contrary, as Hellboy and Alice follow him through a suddenly-appearing, unearthly landscape. The two discuss Hellboy's recent death and resurrection (in short story "The Island") until their guide announces that, in revenge for all the faerie creatures Hellboy has killed in his career, he has led them into an ambush. Hellboy and Alice are besieged by a horde of pygmy fairy savages wielding poison-tipped weapons. Alice is struck and fatally poisoned, when three bird-women arrive, killing or scaring off Hellboy's attackers. They tell Hellboy that "their mistress" has medicine for Alice's poisoning and then transport him to a hill overlooking their castle, which is wreathed in flame.
Awaiting her own army, the "Queen of Blood" comforts Gruagach and promises to grant his prayers to be restored to the strength of his youth and to revenged on Hellboy. Meanwhile Hellboy, outside the flame-ringed castle, is told that he's been brought to it in order to defeat Eligos
The Lesser Key of Solomon
The Lesser Key of Solomon or Clavicula Salomonis , is an anonymous 17th-century grimoire, and one of the most popular books of demonology...
, a duke of Hell commanding a troop of demons who besiege it. The demon batters Hellboy unstoppably until, in return for a promise of favor should he claim his throne, Hellboy learns from a nearby imp the secret of Eligos' one weakness, an insignia worn as a ring. Hellboy destroys the ring and kills the weakened demon, ignoring his pleas for mercy, before racing Alice into the castle to be immediately and successfully cured with the antidote. The mistress of the castle appears and is revealed to be Morgan le Fay
Morgan le Fay
Morgan le Fay , alternatively known as Morgane, Morgaine, Morgana and other variants, is a powerful sorceress in the Arthurian legend. Early works featuring Morgan do not elaborate her character beyond her role as a fay or magician...
. Meanwhile the Queen of Blood receives a deputation from the dwarf-like "King of Jutland" and orders the king's tearful craftsman-ambassador to return home and murder the king, feeding his heart to the fire and forging her a helmet reflecting her new incarnation as Badbh
Badb
In Irish mythology, the Badb or Badhbh —meaning "crow" or "vulture"—was a war goddess who took the form of a crow, and was thus sometimes known as Badb Catha . She often caused fear and confusion among soldiers in order to move the tide of battle to her favoured side...
, Macha
Macha
Macha is the name of a goddess and several other characters in Irish mythology.Macha can also mean:*The LÉ Macha , a ship in the Irish Naval Service, named for the goddess*The Macha crater in Russia, less than 7000 years old...
, and Mor-rioghain
Morrígan
The Morrígan or Mórrígan , also written as Morrígu or in the plural as Morrígna, and spelt Morríghan or Mór-Ríoghain in Modern Irish, is a figure from Irish mythology who appears to have once been a goddess, although she is not explicitly referred to as such in the texts.The Morrigan is a goddess...
, the triple goddess of war.
As Alice recovers from her poisoning, Morgan le Fay tells Hellboy that his witch mother (whose name she reveals to have been Sarah Hughes, his demon father's having been Azzael), was the last in a line of female descendants, all witches, of Mordred
Mordred
Mordred or Modred is a character in the Arthurian legend, known as a notorious traitor who fought King Arthur at the Battle of Camlann, where he was killed and Arthur fatally wounded. Tradition varies on his relationship to Arthur, but he is best known today as Arthur's illegitimate son by his...
, her son by King Arthur. This means that Hellboy is Mordred's first male descendant, and "rightful king of Britain". While conveying Alice to a sickbed, she identifies Hellboy with the Red Dragon
Y Ddraig Goch
The Welsh Dragon appears on the national flag of Wales . The oldest recorded use of the dragon to symbolise Wales is from the Historia Brittonum, written around 820, but it is popularly supposed to have been the battle standard of King Arthur and other ancient Celtic leaders...
of Britain that Merlin
Merlin
Merlin is a legendary figure best known as the wizard featured in the Arthurian legend. The standard depiction of the character first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written c. 1136, and is based on an amalgamation of previous historical and legendary figures...
identified under Vortigern
Vortigern
Vortigern , also spelled Vortiger and Vortigen, was a 5th-century warlord in Britain, a leading ruler among the Britons. His existence is considered likely, though information about him is shrouded in legend. He is said to have invited the Saxons to settle in Kent as mercenaries to aid him in...
's Tower
Dinas Emrys
Dinas Emrys is a rocky and wooded hillock near Beddgelert in Gwynedd, north-west Wales. Rising some 250 ft above the floor of the Glaslyn river valley, it overlooks the southern end of Llyn Dinas in Snowdonia. Little remains of the castle structures that once stood here, save its stone...
. She then takes Hellboy to a garden pool where the sword Excalibur
Excalibur
Excalibur is the legendary sword of King Arthur, sometimes attributed with magical powers or associated with the rightful sovereignty of Great Britain. Sometimes Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone are said to be the same weapon, but in most versions they are considered separate. The sword was...
floats embedded in a stone. She reveals that the Queen of Blood is the witch Nimue, who, following her seduction and defeat of Merlin, has used Merlin's stolen powers to commune with (and be driven mad by) Hellboy's arch-nemesis, the Ogdru Jahad
Ogdru Jahad
The Ogdru Jahad are fictional characters in Mike Mignola's Hellboy comic. They are the Dragon of Revelation, and are destined to bring about the end of the world. Though the Ogdru Jahad are the ultimate antagonists in the series, they are not themselves active, their release from imprisonment...
, before being killed by her fearful fellow-witches. Morgan le Fay insists that to defeat Nimue, Hellboy must draw Excalibur and thereby summon an undead army of British noblemen (many of whom seemingly hang in full armor from the branches of a great tree growing through her castle). As Morgan le Fay describes Nimue's bloodlust, Hellboy relives the conclusion of his fight with the giants, in which his own bloodlust (using a makeshift sword), had apparently caused him, in panels accompanied by quotes from the Book of Revelations, to briefly settle into his destined role as Beast of the Apocalypse. He awakens from his memories and Morgan leaves him, dejected and shaken, alone with the sword.
Walking through the castle Hellboy broods on the situation. In Alice's room he briefly sees a ghostly Vasilisa (last seen in "Darkness Calls"
Hellboy: Darkness Calls
Hellboy: Darkness Calls is a comic book limited series created by Mike Mignola published by Dark Horse Comics starring Hellboy.- Plot :In Darkness Calls, several plotlines and characters from earlier stories converge....
) who warns caution before disappearing. Alice awakens and urges him to take the sword, telling him of a dream she has just had in which King Arthur in his tomb tells her her life is bound to the sword and that she will be "first to see the new king with his crown." Later, Hellboy hears a howling and leaves the now-sleeping Alice to investigate. Astaroth appears to him and tells him he hears the dogs of the mythical Wild Hunt who smell the war that's coming. Astaroth will not say who leads the Hunt but tells Hellboy that Satan has been asleep under his city of Pandemonium for "almost two thousand years now," fated to be killed in his sleep by Hellboy himself when Hellboy goes down to Pandemonium throwing down Satan's princes and generals, and claiming his waiting crown and his father's sword. Astaroth insists that Hellboy will then use his stone right hand to enliven a waiting inanimate army which alone can break the bonds of Hell freeing its denizens to overrrun and annihilate the world. As Hellboy battles a reflection of himself, bearing sword and crown, which attacks him from a nearby mirror, Astaroth tells him that if he takes Excalibur (as he must to save the world from Nimue) the act will inevitably lead to him claiming his demon father's sword, and himself destroying the world. His battle with his mirror image concludes with the castle being briefly engulfed in flame, leaving him alone and worrying aloud what has happened to Alice.
Hellboy finds Alice's charred remains in her sickroom, where Vasilisa appears to Hellboy to ask him why he didn't take Excalibur. Hellboy explains that he does not trust Morgan le Fay and that, in light of the bloodlust he showed wielding a sword against the giants, he fears what he would do if he took Excalibur. She argues that rather than trusting what he's been told of his world-destroying destiny, he should trust Alice's faith in him and her desire for him to take the sword. He goes back to the sword, and - watched by Vasilisa and Astaroth, and from afar also by Queen Mab and Dagda's old servant, Sir Edward Grey and the witch doctor Mohlomi, the Baba Yaga and her servant Koku, and three witches watching scrying in their cauldron - he pulls the sword easily from the stone, saying "Son of a ..." and suddenly finds himself beside a still-living Alice out on the hillside where they had met Mab, dressed as if nothing had transpired since, save that Hellboy is holding the sword. They embrace, and in her castle Morgan le Fay notes the event while reviewing a chessboard populated by white and black skeletons and one red king. The Gruagach begs Nimue to empower him as promised, but when he realizes she lacks the power to do so she becomes enraged at his lack of faith and banishes him from her service to wander off in tears. Hellboy and Alice wander down the hill musing over Hellboy's newfound kingship, as Lady Hatton of the Osiris club observes them in her scrying glass. When the club's newer members begin to panic over Hellboy's accession to kingship, they are killed by the club's original seven members who explain that they have been waiting for Hellboy's kingship since 1866 when the spirit Larzod, also inspiration of long-time Hellboy adversaries the Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra, had appeared to them and granted them immortality with which to await Hellboy's death in final battle, cutting off and seizing his world-controlling stone right hand. Finally, the craftsman-ambassador from Jutland, having murdered his king for the heart he has extracted to burn as fuel, tearfully holds up the helmet he has forged for Nimue, in the form of a trio of ravens.